I can understand the frustration of
commuters with the prospect of struggling to get to work, but I can also
understand the frustration of workers who are not paid in line with the cost of
living.Further restricting the rights
of organised labour to flex its muscles in the interests of its membership is
the wrong answer in an economic and political climate in which the working and
middle classes are being turned against one another while the gap between them
and those at the top of our society widens.

The extent to which communitarianism,
solidarity, and the underlying principles of organised labour (sometimes, it is
true, undermined by highly-centralised union organisation) are no longer a part
of our politics has been very apparent from the criticisms greeting the strike.

People complain that strike action would
be “disruptive”, as though this is somehow outrageous.But what, at the end of the day, would be the
point of a strike action which allowed people to go about their business as
though nothing untoward had occurred?The idea behind a strike is for one group of people to point out what
they see as an injustice within the system in which they operate.To do so, they seek to demonstrate the value
of their labour by withholding it, thereby making the case to their community
and/or their political representatives that their needs and interests should be
taken seriously.That community and
those representatives then weigh up the value of that labour as measured
against the costs of a strike action, debate the merits of demands, and ideally
contextualise them within their economic environment.Not every strike will succeed, but creating a
condition in which workers cannot even make their case to the public sets a
dangerous precedent (the evisceration of private sector unions and the
concomitant tumble in the welfare of most of our country’s workforce is a good
illustration of the perils in restricting labour rights).

Commentators attack BART workers for
demanding salaries in line with the cost of living, arguing that these workers
already make more than average, the suggestion being that they should content
themselves with living a lesser quality of life.To me, the more logical conclusion in the
context of our very wealthy society—wherein that wealth is distributed in a
grossly inequitable manner—would be for other people to organise themselves
along similar lines in order that they, too, might be in a position to ask that
they be paid a living wage.

People talk about an era of limits and
the need for people to tighten their belts, but tellingly, within our political
discourse, restrictions always begin with those who have little to spare, even
as corporate profits head for the stratosphere and the personal incomes of
executives and other elites climb relentlessly.The actions of even a small group of transport workers demonstrates the
frailty of the myths underpinning the drive for austerity in Washington, D.C.,
and help to explain why those actions are so harshly condemned.

The strong reaction by so many Bay Area
residents against the disruption of the strike is also a telling indicator
about the importance of just one form of labour to the functioning of our
society.BART workers are not alone in
performing labour which is, in addition to being essential, under-valued by
those who make use of it.In fact many
of the things which make our day-to-day lives functional and pleasant, between
the time we get up in the morning and go to sleep at night, stem from the
labour of people who are likely to be underpaid and under-acknowledged.We don’t always see the people whose labour makes
the morning commute, the lunch-break, the clean workplace bathroom, the empty
trash cans, or the evening trip home possible.But their labour is no less essential to our lives for its social invisibility.

A just economic system would reward
those people (that is, probably anyone reading this) by providing them with the
means to live a decent quality of life.Ours, on the other hand, unleashes savage attacks on unionised labour in
the hopes that depressing their wages and quality of life will create a
trickle-down effect in the workforce, lowering expectations about the rights
and wages and welfare to which members of our society are entitled.

Labour could use some reforming.It could bear to be made more democratic.It could stand to be more self-conscious of
the context in which it operates.But the
relentless and increasingly vituperative attacks on organised labour in our
society belie what unionisation brought the American workforce.Thanks to strike action in our nation’s
history, people enjoy an eight-hour day, a 40-hour week, overtime pay,
week-ends, health benefits, workplace safety regulations, unemployment
benefits, collective bargaining, rights of appeal against arbitrary dismissal, a
minimum wage, and social security.

This is a part of our country’s history
that has not always been taught at schools and universities.And the triumph—however short-lived—of labour
in the United States is something that the Republican Party and its corporate
handlers are keen to excise from our schools’ textbooks, not coincidentally at
the very moment when they are seeking to roll back so many of these
rights.Their motivation is transparent:
as they embark on a drive to enthrone capital and bind the workforce to its
avaricious needs, they want to kill off the memory of another kind of society,
in which workers from different parts of the country, in different industries,
doing different sorts of work, were able to combine their efforts to demand
that they be treated as full members of society, whose labour was valued, and whose
rights to live a decent life were respected.

It is an ugly state of affairs when
people who would benefit from greater collective action within the workforce,
and a more equitable distribution of wealth within our society, have been
conditioned to attack their fellow workers, and refuse to even contemplate the
value of the sort of collective action responsible for the quality of life—even
if diminished—that most of us enjoy.

1 comment:

It's ridiculous and selfish of the BART WORKERS to make the PUBLIC to suffer just to get want they want. Most of these workers MAKE more than an average person and yet they demand MORE money. Take a look at our economy bart workers....there are a lot of UMEMPLOYED workers out there are in NEED of a job to support themselves and or their family! SHAME ON YOU BART WORKERS!

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research.